I generally scoff at combinations involving tea and alcohol (or food, for that matter), but I sometimes make exceptions when I’m feeling inventive, and as long as no really high quality tea is harmed in the process. The particular cocktail shown in the photos is shochu with jasmine pearls infused into it. The drink does [...]
Shinobi-Cha is quite an unusual method for preparing high-grade Japanese green teas. Instead of using hot water, it uses ice, which has a profound effect on the character extracted from the tea leaves. Technically, the method is quite simple:
place dry tea leaves in a pot
cover the tea with ice cubes
wait
The result is a very enjoyable [...]
Are you feeling writerly on a scale even smaller than one hundred and forty character micro-blogging? Consider entering Ito En’s haiku contest. Ito En is the company that manufactures a lot of the bottled and canned green and oolong tea sold in Japan and the United States. Submissions are due by July 6th, 2009. I’m [...]
A couple of nights ago, as I sat pondering the stark range of contrasts in flavor and character among the three types of shochu I was drinking (rice, barley and buckwheat) in a Japanese izakaya during happy hour, I listened to a brief exchange about tea between the two patrons at the table next to [...]
Closely tying in to the last post, I wanted to provide some details on the Banko-Yaki Houhin teapot that I referred to. I wasn’t really in the market for a teapot in this style when I came across this one several months ago, but I really liked the look of it so I bought [...]
Mellow Monk’s Top Leaf is the first flush (Spring picking) of a type of Japanese green tea processed differently from most, as a type of Sencha called Tamaryokucha. It is a lovely tea and one that exhibits signs of having been processed with care and attention. Mellow Monk buys all of its teas from small [...]
Tea Fight (Dou Cha) was released in 2008 and directed by Yeming Wang. I haven’t seen it myself yet, but will very soon. It’s a curious and fast paced melange of Japanese and Chinese tea cultures merged into contemporary and legendary story lines. It appears to be quite overblown, and a little absurd, but there [...]
The object above is not a “tetsubin.” It is also not a “tetsubin teapot,” a “tetsubin tea kettle,” or a “cast iron tea kettle.” It is a cast iron teapot.
Japanese cast iron teapots like the one in the photograph are similar in appearance to a traditional Japanese tetsubin, which I suspect is the reason that [...]
Like many people immersing themselves in aspects of tea cultures and traditions I go through a process of learning better ways of brewing particular teas and learning about the traditional best types of teaware to use with them. My pattern has often been to make smallish initial investments into one specific type of teaware and [...]
Call me a traditionalist, but I generally prefer steeping my tea rather than steeping myself in my tea. Not everyone feels this way, as evidenced by the popularity of the green tea room at Hakone Kowakien Yunessun hot springs spa resort and water amusement park located in the Hakone region of Japan.
A unique spa containing [...]
